[Paul Dickin]

Hi
It seems to me that when Fast(>Pinnacle>Avid Liquid) and Avid considered how to make their NLEs more robust they locked everything into inscrutable file structures that aren’t accessible at OS level, only through their application.

Apple do things quite differently, creating new Studios of applications communicating only at OS level. So all the things Avid and Liquid have done to get the Tim Wilsons of this world enthused have to be done at OS level by Apple.

The Filemaker Pro community seems to be hopeful about Leopard finally allowing multi-user databases, so maybe there IS hope… 🙂

[Paul Dickin]

[Sean ONeil] “They can fix whatever they want in it. The choose not to. Simple as that. There is not some weird XML limitation. They just haven’t spent enough on development and QC.”
Hi
I’m not sure about that.
They’d probably have to ‘fix’ the QuickTime file format first… 🙁
And give OS X a robust file database that tracks media-file metadata (like timecode).

Because if you just ‘fix’ FCP on top of a quicksand of OS murkiness, you perpetuate a situation where FCP can’t track its own Undo History across multiple Sequences/Projects, or Property Inspect its own constructs like multi-layer-derived Freeze Frames.
Or share Project or asset files in a multi-user SAN situation.

If project clip timecode data is derived from Start+offset, then any speed ramping or fundamentally altering the offset will be perpetually fraught until the QT format allows new meta-data to be locked into the altered instance.
Which needs to be an OS file-level property.

That’s my through-a-glass-darkly perception of why these things are so hard to fix… 😉

[Paul Dickin]

[Mark Palmos] “…a very small, head in the sand-type of mentality. “
Hi
Quote, off Apple’s web site”
“Expand your encoding choices with the new Episode Pro plug-in from Telestream. The plug-in supports a range of formats including Flash 8 FLV, Windows Media WMV and VC-1. In addition, Episode Pro encodes broadcast-specific formats, such as GXF, IMX, MPEG-2 4:2:2, High Profile H.264, and formats used by broadcast servers manufactured by Omneon, Quantel, Avid, Grass Valley and Leitch.”
http://www.apple.com/uk/finalcutstudio/compressor/whatsnew.html
That sums up what partners, like AJA or Apogee. or Telestream, are all about 😉

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
That sounds like a ‘wait-until-Leopard-and-its-corresponding-FCP-maintenance-upgrade’ kind of question…

[Paul Dickin]

Lol!
Logic Express 8 is also considerably empowered:
https://www.apple.com/logicexpress/

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
My ex-BBC colleague Alan Roberts has a slightly more complicated take 😉
“After a quick flick through the filter swatch, I reckon that Congo Blue (#181) and Medium Blue-Green (#116) as a combination is about as good as I can find. Congo cuts at about 520nm (I’d really prefer one that cuts at around 490nm), but passes red above 650nm, so the MBG helps by cutting the far red.
Maybe J.Winter Blue (#713) is slightly better but it still needs the MBG 116 to cut the red out.”
https://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=42326
The numbers refer to this catalogue:
https://www.leefiltersusa.com/PDFs/Lighting/LEELightCat03_PolySelNum.pdf

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
OS X natively supports OHCI FireWire (or USB1.1/2) cards, so those cards (the majority?) don’t need a driver.
If nothing connected to a card shows up in Disk Utility, then that’s a problem.
Mostly the problem is that the attached drive does show up in DU, but if it’s Windows formatted this can’t be changed until a new Mac partition is set up.
For onboard FW failure a motherboard PMU/SMU reset mostly brings back functionality. I don’t know if this applies to PCI cards, maybe not…

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Why not cast your eye further down this forum…
There’s a page full of info at the bottom of the thread…
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/952036

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
I’ve done this for an older PCI-X G5. But it was angle-grinder time 😉
The Mac has an eight-port Sonnet Tempo 8 eSATA card in it, and the external box has ordinary PCI-slot-cover SATA external port-replicator sockets chopped down to fit in the SCSI openings in the back of the box.

Inside the box there is a short SATA cable that goes to each drive from the socket, and an SATA>eSATA 1 metre cable connects the socket on the back to the Sonnet card.

The 8-channel cable bunch is a sight to behold, but the drive box is mounted directly under the computer, and the cables bunched together and tied back.

Inside the drive box I fitted a couple of 6-drive Intel Server hot-swap caddy SATA drive cages, which gives drive swapability without cable fiddling.
Also lovely twinkly green activity LEDs on the front panel – just like a proper drive bay 😉

As an aside its far easier converting a SCSI box to FW800, as you can get FW800 bridge boards that exactly fit in the SCSI openings.

[Paul Dickin]

[Fraseraze] “I get an error saying the compression setting for the sequence are different to those of the output. “Hi
As an infrequent user of a DigiBeta deck (with an AJA Io) I often get this message if I forget the Edit ToTape procedure. Usually it comes from thinking the 3 buttons at the bottom left of the ETT window actually do something related to what their tooltip popup says.

Assemble ETT works fine for me if I stick to draging the sequence icon from the Browser onto the Assemble overlay that appears when you drag onto the ETT window. Any other procedure gives rise to just the inscrutable error message you’ve quoted.

So I guess its nothing to do with Blackmagic, and everything to do with FCP gotchas.
Hope that helps.